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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30017736">I Watched</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/maisierita/pseuds/maisierita'>maisierita</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Voyager</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, M/M, Old Fic, Past Chakotay/Paris, repost</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:13:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,193</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30017736</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/maisierita/pseuds/maisierita</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Miguel Ayala watches Tom Paris and intervenes when things get rough.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Watched</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Angst for the sake of angst. I have no excuse.</p><p>Repost from 2002 at the prompting of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledoctor">littledoctor</a>. </p><p>Betaed back in the day by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphiremusings">SapphireMusings</a>, and also Monica, whom I have long since lost contact with. Remember this one, Sapphire? As with all these  old reposts, I am not re-editing except for egregious typos and grammatical errors. You get what you get and you don't get upset, as my dear MIL says.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I never really liked him. I feel I ought to confess it, just for the record, just to be clear. I never really liked him, and I didn't really care what happened to him. Maybe that's because I didn't know him, not that I ever took the time to try. I don't know. He's a nice enough guy. Can be one when he wants, at any rate. Back then, I'm not so sure that was true. He smiled and laughed a lot, in public at least, but the laughter sounded hollow and the smiles never reached his eyes. Not that you could blame him.</p><p>But, see, it wasn't because I liked him that I was watching him. Not because I disliked him, either. It was just something to do to pass the time, help me not think about home. I watched a lot of people. Anyway, I knew Dalby and his crowd, knew what they were likely to do, and I wanted to see how Paris dealt with it.</p><p>I noticed the bruises first in the gym, in the showers. He wasn't alone, of course; it would have been suicide for him to hit the showers alone and he knew it. He and Harry Kim had just finished a game of Parrisis Squares. Kim had won, 15 to 9, which I found improbable given that Paris had been asked to play on the Academy team as an underclassman. So, either he was letting Kim win, or else that stiffness I'd noticed in him was a sign of something more than a simple sore neck.</p><p>I studied him in the mirror and noted the bruises — or rather, the absolute absence of bruises, the places where his skin glowed just a little too pinkly. Kim didn't notice, that was clear, or else he didn't recognize the shiny patches of skin for what they were. And why would he? He wasn't Maquis, had probably never had to use a low-powered regenerator to handle a job that needed more power, had never needed to over-stimulate the skin to heal the deeper injuries beneath it.</p><p>The bruises didn't bother me particularly. As I said, I didn't really like him. But still, the extent of the bruising was excessive. All right, I was as angry as Chakotay to see Paris on Voyager's bridge, maybe more so. As I recall, Chakotay had to hold me back from attacking him. But I got over it pretty quickly. Sure, he sold us out for a ticket out of Auckland, but God, from what I heard of the place later, I can't really blame him.</p><p>Unfortunately (for Paris, at any rate), most of the other Maquis felt otherwise. But hell, it wasn't his fault we got stranded out here. Jeez, even if he hadn't led Janeway to our coordinates, we'd still have gotten stuck out here — the Caretaker wasn't planning on sending us back home anyway — but we'd be on the Liberty instead of Voyager, and B'Elanna would probably be dead. I don't suppose we'd have lasted too long in that rust bucket without her to hold it together.</p><p>I heard later that Paris had saved her life back in the Maquis, and then again on Ocampa, so maybe that's why she tolerated him. Not that they were friends, not in the beginning, but she never blamed him for the mess we were in, and she was a hell of a lot smarter than me and I trusted her judgment. So, when I saw the bruises, I felt ... I don't know, guilty is much too strong a word for it, but I felt bad. I guess I just felt kind of bad for the guy.</p><p>So, I watched him. The signs of abuse were easy to spot, if you knew what they were and bothered to look for them. I guess no one else bothered ... no, that's not fair. I think the Captain looked, and Tuvok, maybe even Chakotay, though I doubt it. But they didn't see anything because Paris went to a lot of trouble to hide it from them. He didn't bother hiding anything from me because, well, why should he? He'd no reason to suspect I was watching.</p><p>It wasn't anything so obvious as circles under his eyes, but rather deep shadows in them. Tension in his back, his neck, always there but some days worse than others, when he knew or suspected they were coming for him. Stiffness afterwards that he'd try to hide, but which would show itself in his walk, his posture at the conn, even the way he'd stand in the turbolift.</p><p>And I saw him once outside his quarters, shoulders tight, mouth grim, one hand hesitating over the entry console, and I knew then with a kind of sick certainty that they came for him in his quarters, that he had not even one safe place to call his own. Though I imagine he was used to that, after Auckland. I'd heard enough by then to know what it must have been like there. They said he hadn't fought, that he'd even liked it. That he hadn't fought, I believed — I'm not sure I'd have fought either — but that he'd liked it? I was never delusional enough to believe that.</p><p>I kept watching him, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, even monitored his quarters for a few nights. I caught it the instant they switched the security feed to replay. It was an old Maquis trick, perfected long ago for Starfleet systems, and it was smoothly done. After all, they were Maquis. But so was I, and I'd been waiting for it.</p><p>I don't think he was expecting them to be there that night, but it wasn't exactly a surprise, either. Something flashed hot in his eyes, anger, fear, reluctant and exhausted acceptance. I was surprised to see him take up a defensive position, surprised to see him fight when he apparently hadn't in prison. But maybe he knew that these guys wouldn't kill him, that here, unlike Auckland, he could afford to resist. Still, as good as he was — and he was damn good — one guy can't best five, except in fairy tales and holonovels. It didn't take too long before they had him down.</p><p>The violence of the subsequent assault, hot on the heels of the beating they'd just delivered, was shocking even to me, even after everything I'd seen in the Maquis. I guess I'd been naïve, but I hadn't really considered rape. In Auckland, yeah, sure ... but not here in the sterile, antiseptic Starfleet atmosphere of Voyager. Even worse than the vicious and humiliating assault was the weary resignation with which Paris took it, took them, one after the other after the other.</p><p>They left him lying there on the floor in his quarters, covered in blood and semen and filth, and I watched him lie still for a long time before he got slowly to his feet. His whole body was trembling, and the first thing he did was to stagger to the replicator, still nude and filthy, and order a bottle of something alcoholic. He downed three drinks in rapid succession, and it was only after he let them settle for a minute that he gathered enough strength to turn around and face the wreckage of his quarters. I saw the shudder run through him, saw him swallow the bile, and then saw him clench his jaw and get to work. He cleaned his quarters with brutal efficiency, obviously a task at which he'd had a lot of practice. It was only when all evidence of the attack had been obliterated that he allowed himself the shower he clearly so desperately wanted. He was in there for a long time, and after he emerged, he spent equally long with a regenerator he fished out of his closet. When he was done, he was all Starfleet tidy and proper again, except for those patches of too-shiny skin. It was almost two in the morning, and his shift started at eight. I wondered if he'd get any sleep at all.</p><p>I don't know; in retrospect maybe I should have done something about it then, but as I said, I didn't really like him and I didn't think it was my problem. If he didn't want to report it for reasons of his own, I wasn't about to. He could have had Chakotay's protection in a heartbeat if he'd wanted it, had it nominally in fact, but I guess he was reluctant to call in the favor. Their relationship had always been complicated, and the previous few months hadn't made it any easier. They'd had a fling back in the Maquis, a few noisy nights together when Chakotay had been horny and Paris had been tall, blond, and very very easy, but then he had been captured and that had been the end of that. Prison had changed him, not for the better, and by all accounts he hadn't been easy to get along with in the first place.</p><p>It had never been much of a relationship, but it was enough to make them uneasy around each other now that circumstances had changed so dramatically. For obvious reasons, Chakotay didn't want it too look like he was favoring Tom with too much attention, the end result being that he completely missed the violence. And Paris was afraid, I guess, that people would misread the situation if Chakotay put him overtly under his protection. Better to take the abuse in private than to have people think he was a whore in public.</p><p>I kept watching Paris, though I stopped monitoring his quarters after that one night. I didn't really want to know how often he came home to find he wasn't alone, how often he had to clear away the filthy residue of assault, naked and drunk and trembling in his quarters. I didn't really like him, but still, I didn't want to know.</p><p>He'd lost some weight, but not enough to draw anyone's attention, and I think he was having trouble sleeping. He looked tired, and finally even Captain Janeway noticed that. She assigned him to an away mission, overnight, a chance to get away from the day-to-day routine. She probably thought she was doing him a favor. Or maybe she was a sadistic bitch who wasn't as clueless as I thought. Whichever was the truth, I paled as I read the duty roster for the mission. Four of them to the planet, Paris plus three Maquis, all of them part of Dalby's little clique.</p><p>Unaccountably, I panicked. I had watched him for so long, I'd begun to feel a strange sense of responsibility for him, even if no one else did. He'd been pale but stoic when the mission roster was posted, and I knew he knew as well as I that his survival chances were slim. Stubborn bastard, he'd die before he asked for help, and if he wouldn't, how could I?</p><p>I read the mission report again and again, scrutinized it, found a detail I could use, and barged into Janeway's office and requested permission to accompany the Away Team, spouting evidence of my familiarity with similar flora and fauna back from my University days. I pleaded cabin fever, pleaded scientific curiosity, pleaded for the sake of pleading, and Janeway grinned at me and said she'd add me to the roster if only I'd leave her office and let her get some work done.</p><p>I don't know exactly what I was thinking, probably that they'd never attack him if I were there, that my mere presence would be enough to save him. And it might have been, at that, if Paris had known I was on his side, but to him I was just another Maquis, certainly not someone he could trust. He steered clear of all of us as best he could, and I couldn't think of a plausible excuse to track him down once he'd left the campfire.</p><p>Still, I thought he'd be safe, because the others wouldn't attack him with me there. Surely, they weren't stupid enough to think I'd stand by and let them assault him.</p><p>I was right, they weren't that stupid. They weren't that stupid at all, and it was only blind luck I didn't sleep through the whole thing. They drugged my drink, a mild sedative, enough to keep me out of it until dawn, enough to let me sleep through any screaming they couldn't muffle ... but I don't much care for synthehol and I guess they didn't notice I dumped half the glass.</p><p>They'd gagged him, so I wouldn't have heard the screaming anyway, but when I woke at one o'clock, head groggy and mouth fuzzy, I heard them laughing, thick and drunk, and had just enough presence of mind to grab my phaser before stumbling through the brush in belated rescue. I'm still not sure how they subdued him — he won't talk about it, even now — but I found out later that they'd rigged his phaser on the shuttle, so he hadn't been able to defend himself when they attacked him.</p><p>There was blood everywhere, ¡Dios!, so much blood, and it covered him so thickly I couldn't tell where the individual injuries were. He wasn't conscious, thank God, but it didn't seem to be stopping them any. There was way too much damage to hide, no way they could heal him with the regenerator on the shuttle, and I wondered dimly if they'd actually planned to rape him to death, or whether it was just working out that way.</p><p>And so I was standing there, enraged, fighting the urge to kill them, and all of a sudden there was this horrible screaming and I only realized later that it was me. They stared at me, startled, and Suder even took a step towards me before I shot him. I collected the rest of the weapons and ordered the other two away, then dropped to my knees beside Paris and checked him out as best I could.</p><p>I was shaking with rage by the time I'd finished, furious at them, furious at him, furious at myself, furious at the whole damn universe. "He's not a Cardassian," I spat at the two who were conscious, and was gratified to see them flinch back. "He's not our enemy!" God, Paris was filthy and I felt filthy too, tainted and corrupted, because I was a Maquis and so were they, and this was what had become of my cause.</p><p>Paris was still unconscious. He'd lost a lot of blood and the internal injuries were probably severe; he'd die if we did nothing. And yet to take him back to the ship for treatment, to bring him into Sickbay like this, to acknowledge that the Maquis had done this to him, that it had been habitual, that I'd known about it and had done nothing ... it would destroy everything we'd worked so hard for. And so I commed Chakotay and told him the weather was a little chilly, and waited impatiently for the five minutes it took him to get to a secure comm line.</p><p>"What is it?" he asked, and I could hear the tension in his voice. Maybe he'd been worried about Paris after all.</p><p>I rarely hear him curse, but he erupted into vulgarities when I explained the situation, and I was glad I was safely out of range of his fists. Sometimes he hits first and thinks later. This time he thought for a good five minutes before coming up with a plan.</p><p>Chakotay and B'Elanna met us in the shuttle bay, and they both went grim and silent at seeing Paris's battered body. "He needs the Doctor," B'Elanna said, and her eyes turned dark with fury. "I don't care how long-"</p><p>"Quiet," Chakotay said, cutting her off. He reached hesitantly to touch Paris, but pulled back before he made contact and flicked his eyes towards his three crewmembers who sat mute and manacled in the back of the shuttle. "Miguel. You say this sort of thing has been going on since we got here?"</p><p>I nodded, uncomfortable, but Chakotay was not interested in any complicity in the abuse on my part, deliberate or not. He turned back to Paris, beaten and bloody and mercifully unconscious. "He never said anything."</p><p>"Maybe he was afraid to," B'Elanna suggested.</p><p>Chakotay dismissed it with a curt, "No." He glared again at the other Maquis, and set his jaw. "He obviously didn't want this made public, and we have to respect that. You deal with them," he ordered me, and I was only too happy to oblige, already having planned who I'd ask to assist me. Maquis justice, swift and brutal, would be quicker and infinitely more satisfying than a Starfleet trial. He and B'Elanna were already gathering up Paris, Chakotay surprisingly gentle in his ministrations, and I heard him mutter distractedly, "You're sure you can reprogram him?"</p><p>I don't know how they fudged the mission logs, and I don't know how they reprogrammed the Doctor so he didn't remember any of the patients he treated in the holodecks, or how Chakotay fixed it so that Dalby and the others were off-duty for the few days they needed to recuperate. As for Paris, the official story was that he'd been bitten by some nasty bug down on the surface, and needed to rest up in his quarters for a few days. I don't know how Chakotay pulled that one over on Janeway, either. I visited him once, and he watched me warily the whole time, obviously uncomfortable and relieved when I cut the visit short. He didn't thank me for saving his life, and I didn't ask his forgiveness for not intervening sooner.</p><p>Chakotay visited him every day, and to hell with what the rest of the ship thought. I'm still not sure what their relationship is; if it's more than professional they keep it damn quiet, but B'Elanna tells me it's none of my business and I suppose she's right. It's just hard to get out of the habit.</p><p>I kept on watching him for a little while after that. I don't know how he dealt with it, knowing they were still on the ship, knowing they'd have killed him if they'd had the chance. Maybe it was enough for him to know they spent a day suffering all they'd made him suffer, that Chakotay had personally made sure they understood exactly what they'd done.</p><p>I don't know how he dealt with me, knowing that I knew everything, had seen it, and had done nothing until it was almost too late. Maybe it was enough for him that it hadn't been too late, in the end.</p><p>Or maybe he was just far stronger than any of us had suspected, and he dealt with it because he had no other choice.</p><p>All I know is that as I watched him, the shadows in his eyes slowly vanished, and the tension in his shoulders gradually disappeared. And sometimes now, even the laughter sounds real.</p>
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